The Governor with Baganda Group.
I have not sought to conceal the perils in describing the riches and the beauties of Uganda. The harsh contrasts of the land, its noble potentialities, its hideous diseases, its fecundity alike of life and death, are capable of being illustrated by many more facts and examples than I can here set down. But what an obligation, what a sacred duty is imposed upon Great Britain to enter the lists in person and to shield this trustful, docile, intelligent Baganda race from dangers which, whatever their cause, have synchronized with our arrival in their midst! And, meanwhile, let us be sure that order and science will conquer, and that in the end John Bull will be really master in his curious garden of sunshine and deadly nightshade.
CHAPTER VI
KAMPALA
Two days after I had arrived at Entebbe the Governor took me over to Kampala. The distance between the ancient and the administrative capital is about twenty-four miles. The road, although unmetalled, runs over such firm, smooth sandstone, almost polished by the rains, that, except in a few places, it would carry a motor-car well, and a bicycle is an excellent means of progression. The Uganda Government motor-cars, which are now running well and regularly, had not then, however, arrived, and the usual method was to travel by rickshaw. Mounted in this light bicycle-wheeled carriage, drawn by one man between the shafts and pushed by three more from behind, we were able to make rather more than six miles an hour in very comfortable style.
The rickshaw-boys, who were neatly dressed in white tunics and red caps, were relieved every eight miles. They have their own way of doing business. From the moment when the travellers are seated in the rickshaw and their labour begins, they embark upon an ever-varying but absolutely interminable antiphony, which, if it exhausts their breath, serves undoubtedly to keep their spirits up. "Burrulum," cry the pushers; "Huma," says the puller. "Burrulum," say the pushers again, and so on over and over again for a very long time. All these chaunts have their meanings, and if the traveller is found to be heavy or known to be ignorant of the language, he would not always be complimented by a correct translation. The phrase I have quoted means "iron upon wood"; and its signification is that the iron of European strength and skill, however superior, yet cannot get along without the wood of native labour and endurance. With such unexceptionable sentiments no one would quarrel. Yet even these lose their flavour by repetition, and after half an hour of "Burrulum" and "Huma" I was constrained to ask the singers whether they could not possibly manage to convey us in silence. They tried their best, but I could see they were unhappy, and after a while, out of compassion and to improve the pace, I withdrew the ban, and the chorus was joyfully resumed in a new and more elaborate form.
The manners of the Baganda are ceremonious to a degree. They well deserve Sir Harry Johnston's description of them as "the Japanese of Africa." If you say "Good morning" to a stranger on an English road, it is as like as not that his surprise will throw him into a posture of self-defence; but when two Baganda meet they begin to salute each other as soon as they come within earshot. "How are you?" cries the one. "Who am I that you should care to know?" replies the other. "Humble though I be, yet I have dared," rejoins the first. "But say first how are you," continues the second. "The better for the honour you have done me," is the answer. By this they have already passed each other, and there is only time for the Parthian affability, "The honour is mine, and I shall treasure it," and a quavering of delicately-modulated, long-drawn "A—a—a's" of contentment and goodwill which gradually die away in the distance, leaving neither of them the worse circumstanced, nor the better informed. I must add, for the reader's caution, that the aforesaid dialogue is not an invariable ritual. The phrases may be varied ad infinitum to suit the occasion; but it will suffice as an illustration of these roadside courtesies.
Baganda Warriors at Kampala.